Welcome to the Madden America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry, and social justice.

Hello and welcome to the Madden in the Family podcast. I'm Miranda Spencer, editor of Mad in America's Parent Resources section.

Today's topic is adolescent rage, understanding and dealing with teenagers and young adults

who are angry and explosive. If they enter the mental health system, these youth might

typically receive a psychiatric label of oppositional defiant disorder or perhaps bipolar disorder

and be prescribed drugs such as neuroleptics. We're going to look at some alternatives to that

path. Our guest today is Ben Furman, MD. Dr. Furman is a psychiatrist in Finland and an internationally

renowned teacher of Solutions focused therapy. He is the founder

of the child-friendly kid skills method, which is based on the idea of converting children's

problems into skills that children can learn with help of their family and friends. Ben is one of

our resident experts for the Parent Resources page's question and answer section, and his essay called

Helping Children with Angry Outbursts is another one of the resources there. Welcome.

Thank you very much. It will be a pleasure to talk with you.

So you've written a lot about helping younger children who express explosive anger, tantrums and hitting and so on,

and their parents and teachers, how to help them all cope better.

But what about the older kids?

I hear so many parents who say their teenager is defiant, aggressive, even violent to family members and to others. And these

parents say that they're not only concerned about the disruption and why their daughter or son is so

angry, but they feel they have to walk on eggshells and they're even worried that their child

may wind up in prison someday.

So what is this all about?

From your perspective, how does solutions-focused therapy look at such young people and what

...